


Like Broken Glass on My Skin

by misbegotten



Category: X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Fix-It, M/M, Post-Canon Fix-It, X-Men: First Class (2011)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-05
Updated: 2018-09-05
Packaged: 2019-07-07 07:46:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15903957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misbegotten/pseuds/misbegotten
Summary: After Cuba, Erik turns up in Charles' hospital room. Angst with a hopeful ending.





	Like Broken Glass on My Skin

**Author's Note:**

> The obligatory post-divorce fix-it that every Cherik writer must tackle? Like Charles fruitlessly tackling Erik to the ground on a sandy beach? 
> 
> Title from "Remind Me To Forget" by Kygo & Miguel. 
> 
> More of a hard Teen than Mature, but better safe than sorry. Thank you to [out_there](http://archiveofourown.org/users/out_there) for the beta. All errors are, of course, my own.

"Charles," Erik says, and his voice sounds far away. "Charles, speak to me."

Charles is high on painkillers and shock. He's not entirely sure how Erik managed to get into his hospital room. He's not sure how Erik found out.

But Erik is here. And he's obviously shaken.

Charles reaches out a hand blindly -- his eyes are still closed, as though he can ignore the absence of feeling in his legs if he just doesn't look -- and Erik's fingers tangle with his. Then Erik's hand slides up, gripping Charles' wrist. As if feeling for a pulse.

Charles' heart beats steadily. Like it had never been shattered on a beach in Cuba. 

Charles pulls his hand away.

"Charles, are you okay?" Erik's voice is laced with sorrow. Even with his eyes closed, Charles knows that Erik's not wearing the helmet. Erik's mind is pressing in on his -- familiar and under other circumstances welcome -- but Charles can't bear to sift through his thoughts right now. "I didn't know, when we left--"

"But you did," Charles says dully. "You left me. You left us there. To deal with... everything."

I can't feel my legs, he'd said over and over. An endless loop until Hank had gripped his shoulder and said, his voice strained: "Charles, you're projecting."

Erik had been gone and Charles had been in pain. Now Erik is here and Charles is still in pain. Not physically. Not really, thanks to the drugs. But his heart hurts whenever Erik speaks.

"What do you want?" Charles asks, his tone scrupulously polite. Not forgiveness, he thinks. Please, not that. Not yet.

"I want to be here," Erik says. "With you." He touches Charles' face, and Charles finally opens his eyes. Blue eyes staring at him. But not pleading.

Challenging him. Like always.

There'd been nights when Erik pushed Charles into the mattress, pinning Charles down as he fucked him. And every time there'd been a whisper of challenge in Erik's movements. "You let me take what I want," he murmured into Charles' neck. Biting at the skin on Charles' shoulder, leaving a purpling bruise that marked Charles as Erik's. Capturing Charles' hips with his broad hands, bringing Charles up to meet his thrusts. "You shouldn't let me," Erik said.

Charles had grinned. He could stop Erik in mid-thrust, if he so chose. He could freeze Erik, rampage through Erik's mind, but he'd never wanted to. He'd liked belonging to Erik, a little bit. He'd liked the possessive way Erik touched him, enfolded him into Erik's arms, ravaged his lips until they were spit-slick and swollen.

And then Erik had shut him out with that blasted helmet of Shaw's. Cut him off completely. Left Charles blind to his resolve. 

Not that Charles hadn't read Erik's intentions in his face and stance when he came out of the submarine. He knew Erik's body, every line of his frame. Charles didn't need telepathy to see what Erik meant to do. 

He just hadn't wanted to accept that, in the end, Erik would leave him.

And now Erik is at his bedside, a hint of something fierce in his look. "You can get past this," he says. "You have to."

Charles sighs wearily. "My friend," he says, jaded bitterness sneaking through those two words. "I don't have to do anything. Not for you."

Erik's face moves closer. "No," he agrees. "Not for me." His lips touch Charles', a bittersweet echo of something they used to have. "For yourself."

“For myself?” Charles bites out, his anger rising quickly. If he could kick Erik right now, he would. "If you haven't noticed, I'm broken."

Erik isn't swayed by Charles' temper. He has never has been. "We're both in need of repair," he says, a bitter smile curling at his lips.

Charles closes his eyes again, anger fading as quickly as it came. He doesn't need to touch a finger to his temple. The thought escapes without the physical prompt. _I don't know if I have the strength._

Erik grips Charles' shoulder, firm but kind. "You do," he says, his voice low. "You can be more powerful than you ever imagined. You just need to find that place within yourself." He nearly whispers the last bit. "That place between rage and serenity."

Charles doesn't answer.

"I'll help you," Erik says.

Charles wants so much to believe.

"Does Raven know?" Charles asks, changing the subject. It's a thought that had not -- but should have, he thinks guiltily -- occurred to him before now.

Erik shakes his head. "Do you think I could have stopped her from coming if that were the case?" 

Charles feels reassured by that. He'd let them both go, Erik and Raven, but part of him had shrieked internally and wanted them to stay. He'll make his peace with their absence eventually. 

Perhaps he won't have to, if what Erik is saying is true. 

"You'd... stay?" he finds himself asking. What answer does he want? That Erik might bind himself to Charles out of, what, pity? Surely not.

Erik must read something of his thoughts in his face. "I won't go easy on you," Erik says, his tone still low, urgent.

Charles struggles up from the hospital bed, and Erik puts a warning hand on his shoulder. "Don't--" Erik starts, and Charles wants to argue but the pain in his chest and torso makes itself known. He subsides, but he locks eyes with Erik.

"I've never expected you to go easy on me," Charles says. That's a simple truth. Erik had pushed Charles to be more than a lab rat in Cerebro, to spearhead the search for mutants, to test his own powers as much as Charles challenged the others to explore theirs. There had been nights with just the two of them, sometimes sparring over chess, sometimes in bed. Erik had played lazily with Charles' hair, breathed against his skin, and urged Charles to read him. Erik had tried throwing up mental roadblocks to trip up Charles, but Charles tore through them easily.

Now, Charles reaches out his first tentative thread of mental inquiry to Erik. Erik's mind, without the helmet, is like a soothing embrace. He feels the slightest bit of guilt there, but mostly he reads determination. Determination to push Charles, to goad him into recovery of his legs (that might not be possible, if the fretting that Charles feels from the doctors is anything to go by), to be by Charles' side until...

...there is no until. There's no end point in Erik's thoughts. He's not planning to leave once Charles is out of the hospital bed and home. There's no "this is when I will stop caring for Charles" because Erik doesn't want to stop _caring_ for Charles. He thinks of them together, building a future together. As a unit. As a whole.

Oh, Charles wants to trust him.

It will be a long road to recovery, Charles knows. But Erik has never been shy of hard work. And Charles finds for the first time, since he realized his body might never be whole again, that he is not afraid.

He extends his hand, this time with firm purpose, and Erik threads his fingers through Charles'. "We'll go forward together," Erik says.

And Charles doesn't just _want_ to believe. He actually believes it.


End file.
